舜 is one of the 三皇五帝 - paired with 尧 in the famous abdication story: Yao passed over his own son and chose Shun, a commoner of legendary filial piety, on merit. The pair 尧舜 becomes shorthand for the Confucian golden age of sage-kings and is invoked constantly in classical and modern political rhetoric.
history
The literary 'rose-of-Sharon' meaning comes from 《诗经》 - 颜如舜华 ('a face like the hibiscus flower') - where 舜 is a phonetic loan for 蕣, the day-blooming hibiscus. The poetic image is fragile beauty: the flower opens at dawn and falls by evening.
Components
pictograph
舜Shùn
Shun; hibiscus
Single graph - small-seal analysis takes the top as a creeping vine and the bottom 舛 (two feet pointing apart) as the radical (Kangxi #136), suggesting a spreading climbing plant - the original 'hibiscus / morning-glory' sense. The sage-king name is a phonetic borrowing. Indexed under 舛 in traditional lookup.
Filed under radical 舛 (chuǎn, #136) by convention. 舛 is not a separate component in 舜, so no strokes are highlighted.
